From the aethereal platform of the future, what will we look like (supposing anyone even bothers to look back... and down) but a feckless army of gauze ants, milling about blindly, to no particular purpose?

Perhaps humility begins with the acceptance of being patronized and condescended to. "The future", in this respect, might well be translated as: "the young, in their infinite wisdom".

I suppose we were there once, ourselves.

(The older one gets, the more sympathy one can't help feeling for those benighted elders... maybe illumination comes, if it ever comes in the midst of this great sea of endarkenment which is being human, with the understanding that we are now them, forever?)

Issa's great affection for insects and animals has always struck me as coming from a similar perspective - though criticized as being un-haiku-like (or senryu-like), his work, at least in the translations that appeal to me, has always worked on two levels and one is our kinship with insect and animal life. This, of course, is the Buddhist way - the feckless gauze ants really are one up on us and the perspective from the future is very likely more prophecy than conceit.